Community Kitchen

The idea of a cooking show, ala Julia Child sorta, as a way of teaching nutrition and related skills to young and even older folk, is taking shape in my kitchen. Jody sparked the idea one Thanksgiving, of turning that facility over to a pro (we were out of town in that instance), whereas Kym & Tim have shown me how it works, provided you're lucky enough to know lovely people.

The idea here is a public school educates people in the building about the surrounding ecosystem, which in our case means Bull Run, various watersheds, zoning constraints, Hwy 26, the Little Sandy, Mt. Hood... Mt. Tabor. The topography would vary, as would the lore, yet the software needn't be all that different. Load up the school server with GeoDjango and illuminate urban farms, community plots or whatever. We're already serving up prototypes in Portland, with more in the cooker.

Whereas neither Lindsey or I have camera skills approaching Nirel's, we're still able to storyboard in rough cut, experimenting around the neighborhood (Richmond / Sunnyside) filming median strips, or whatever you call that strip between the sidewalk and public street. Portlanders increasingly farm those aggressively, choosing produce a few yards away over stuff on a truck from the heartlands. This is not because we hate the heartlands. We just want to stay in shape, not lose all competence to feed ourselves (too Matrix, pre the red pill).

"Cuisines of the world" sounds fun in concept but I'm not planning to recruit cooks from all 130 odd nations. The dishwasher is still broken, some of the metal is falling off, one of the burners is out. This is more a rehearsal space than a live venue. Retired navy ships have better kitchens, as do active duty ones.